The YouTuber Dani has developed his own survival game. He did this in response to a comment under his videos that challenged him to do so. His game, Muck, is available for free on Steam and has quickly broken the mark of 10,000 players.
What kind of game is it? In Muck, you land on an island and try to survive as long as possible. You need to gather resources and craft tools, weapons, and armor from them. You can also build your own base. At night, mysterious enemies appear that you need to fight.
The game offers 3 modes that can be played solo or with friends:
- Survival mode
- Versus mode, where you fight against other players
- Creative mode, where you can build freely and there are no enemies
Muck aims to combine Minecraft with the elements of a roguelike. The graphics of the survival game are kept very simple.
How successful is the game? On June 5, Muck was released on Steam and since then, an average of over 10,000 players have been checking in on the survival game daily. At peak times, there were even 15,685 players online simultaneously (via Steamcharts).
The player count is enormous for an unknown title, but can initially be explained by the fact that YouTuber Dani has promoted the game with 2.36 million subscribers.
What is special about Muck is that the YouTuber developed it completely alone and within a few months. This, along with the very unconventional way of development, are Dani’s trademarks.
Muck receives 95% positive reviews, but should we take them seriously?
How was the game developed?
- The YouTuber Dani was challenged by the user sjacek to develop his own survival game.
- Dani oriented himself on existing databases and pre-written code snippets and assembled his own game with the help of YouTube videos and tutorials. The content was all publicly accessible and was credited with sources.
- He repeatedly encountered obstacles, such as Steam networking or the animations of animals. For these, Dani always sought new solutions and workarounds.
You can watch the complete development of the game in this video:
How is Muck received? The survival game has over 8,600 ratings on Steam, with 95% of them being positive. However, one should be cautious with the reviews as some fans of the YouTuber write reviews that do not even refer to the game itself. However, the game is free-to-play and thus does not financially harm anyone.
Among the reviewers, there are also some individuals who have accumulated a considerable number of playing hours in a short time and have written accordingly detailed opinions:
- The player Parzival writes after 6.7 hours of gameplay: “Once fully defeated, it is not repeatable, although defeating fully is difficult, especially at the normal and gamer difficulty levels […]. Playing the survival mode alone is not fun. This game is meant to be played with friends. The easy difficulty is okay, the normal difficulty is hard, and the gamer difficulty is almost impossible. Be prepared to need several attempts to succeed…”
- Comrade Birb writes about Muck (7.1 hours of gameplay): “This is ironically a pretty good game. You have little time before night falls, which makes even chopping down a tree much more exciting. You have to decide what to do next and want to start with the wood. In addition, you always have to pay attention to which resources you collect. If you are overburdened, you have to go back, which takes too much time.”
The negative reviews mainly criticize the base-building system. It is said to be clunky and not very beneficial because enemies can destroy buildings at night. Some users also do not like the quick transition between day and night.
Dani himself says in the YouTube video about Muck that the development was fun, but time-consuming, and that players should not take his survival game too seriously.
Is this the first game the YouTuber has built? No, on the YouTube channel, there are several videos where Dani creates a VR game, a 3D game, or a game within 12 hours.
Real game designers will probably learn little new from the videos, but for the average viewer, they are very entertaining, also because Dani does not take himself too seriously.
If you are looking for more survival games, you should check out this list: The 25 best survival games 2021 for PlayStation, Xbox, and PC.
